A Soulful of Goodness

You know how there are moments, when you just feel like life is good? Like all is right in the world, and you are where you belong - surrounded by love and sweetness and all that is love and hope and warmth and light?

The doctor and I had one of those moments the other night. We had spent the evening eating pizza and watching a British political thriller we rented from netflix. Afterward he took out his guitar. He played, and I sang along to Don McClean, and the Sundays, and Jem, and more I can't remember, and then we climbed into bed and read aloud from a book we bought together in the bookstore - a daily intellectual devotional - that teaches you something new every day. I think the topic was the Bust of Nefertiti, or maybe Hamurabi's code. I can't remember now.

When he set the book down, I pulled myself in close to him an he wrapped his arms around me tight, and just held me like that for maybe five minutes. I don't know what it was about that moment, but my heart just started to pound. I was just so overcome with the love and the goodness of all of it. The comfortable warmth of his embrace and the feeling of sharing our lives and our thoughts and the deepest part of our souls. I knew he felt it too.

When I pulled away, I looked up at him and he leaned in to kiss me. And all of that goodness and love became passion that spread like electricity between us. I couldn't get enough of him - I wanted his skin on my skin, his lips on my lips. Our tongues danced and teased, our pulses quickened, and our skin warmed and tingled with every touch and caress, and we made love like there was nothing else in the world but us. It was wonderful.

As we lay basking in the afterglow, I couldn't help but tell him how I felt.

"This feels really good," I blurted out. "Do you feel it?"
"That depends on what "this" is."
"This moment. Us. Lying here. Being together. Planning our lives."
"I was just thinking the same thing."

Lessons in Internet Dating

I got a funny email from my X recently. He joined an internet dating service he tells me, and he was wondering what my experience was like.

What? My first reaction was don't you have anyone else to ask about their internet dating experiences besides your x-wife? But I know the answer to that question. No he doesn't.

And I hate to be mean, but ladies he-- and men like him--are the reason that most of your internet dates are flops. Oh yes, he is relatively good-looking. He is well educated, has no kids, and loves dogs. Sounds like a catch!

And he is. If you don't mind the fact that he is unemployed, wears the same socks and underwear for days on end (and does not think that is gross), lets the muddy dogs up all over the couch, and has slept in a bed that the cat has peed on without changing the sheets on more than one occasion. In addition, he almost never leaves the house except to walk the dogs, is a pack-a-day smoker, and has nothing in the refrigerator except beer and bowtie pasta and tomato sauce.

Sigh. These are the things you will only find out after several dates, and perhaps you will even find them endearing ... or be able to look past them, like I did, for several years. But these are the men who are on the internet.

Now I know what you're thinking. I met the doctor on the internet didn't I? He is not a flop? Well, yes it's true. But he did not have a profile. He found me. And women are much more hopeful and honest than men. And I think he was a rare anomaly in the online dating world.

So when asked about my experiences, I told him as much.
"I received plenty of emails," I told him. " Most of the men were too old, too young, too ugly or completely uneducated. A few of them seemed possible, but then they often never went beyond a few emails - and when they did, it usually didn't lead to much. The guys I did meet were nice enough, but boring. It was no wonder the didn't meet anyone in real life."

He told me he had put up one of my favorite pictures of him - a picture I had taken at the beach with our three puppies in his arms -- and gotten so many emails he couldn't respond. I told him not to get too excited. But I decided to be encouraging. "You're attractive, smart, don't have a crazy X-wife and a big child support check to write, and you love dogs. What's not to like? Now just get a job and quit smoking and they'll wonder why I ever let you go!"

In case you are wondering why I let him go, re-read paragraph 4. But I do genuinely want him to be happy, and there is someone for everybody, right? He responded to my encouraging words by saying that he hoped to meet someone who liked him for who he was, not how much money he made (read: zero) but that yes, maybe quitting smoking was a good idea. I decided not to tell him that I would never date any man who was unemployed, unless he was independently wealthy and set for life. I think I can comfortably speak for most women when I say that while I am not looking for a man to support me, I am not looking to support a man either. I kept that to myself and instead I just wished him good luck.

A few days later he confessed that I had been right - most of the responses were ridiculously poor matches - but there were two that seemed promising, and he had been emailing them. One was younger - in her late twenties (he is 45, go figure) and has no children. The other was in her thirties with children. One of them asked for a picture of him without sunglasses on -- and he asked me if I would take it.

Again, shouldn't someone else be doing that? Can't you figure out how to use the auto timer on the camera? Is it not a little strange to ask your x-wife to take the photos for your internet dating profile? I hedged a little but said I would do it.

I came over later. He had already figured out the camera and done it himself he said. I think he knew I was secretly glad. Then he asked me something else.

"So what would you think if a guy accidentally sent you an email he wrote to someone else?"
"What? Did you do that?"
He nodded.
"Would you be pissed?" He asked.
Um, hell yeah. I'm pretty darn sure I wouldn't have much interest after that.
"I'm sure she'll understand," I told him.

Some things you just have to figure out for yourself.

I made up my mind- but I need to throw up first

I have thought long and hard about this. My stomach has been in knots since I left him lying in bed, staring sleepily at me, wondering if I was angry (I wasn't. Hurt and confused and frustrated perhaps– but not really angry). And those knots, they have been tightening with my resolve to speak my mind. Tightening because I don't know what he will say. I don't know if he will be hurt, or if he will understand. Or if he will beg me to change my mind.

Or if he will say, "Okay," with the ambivalence in his voice he had that morning I sat next to him on the bed and said I was leaving. An Okay that said he knew something was up, but he wasn't going to talk me out of it. That he would let me go and work it out.

I think I have worked it out.

Before Indiana we had hit a few rough patches. He was tired from working all the time. I was tired of working all the time, and we were both feeling the strain of trying to make our shared life and schedules work. I was insecure about our relationship, and although I didn't doubt his commitment, I was doubtful of his ability to walk away if he needed to. His resolve to call it quits if he thought I wasn't the one.

And I needed to know he could be honest – even if it might hurt. After all, that seemed to be the pattern I had gotten myself into on a regular basis – men who didn't love me, but didn't have the guts to say so. I was terrified of being trapped in that situation again, and I was looking for any signs that he might have changed his mind, signs that I should make a break for it before my heart was trampled on. And that made my trust in the relationship tenuous at best.

Yet he had invited me to spend two weeks with his kids and his parents in his childhood home. That seemed like a pretty big step. It seemed like the sort of thing that means something. But by contrast, he never so much as took my hand in front of his children. His daughter told me she thought we were just friends, and as far as I could tell, his friends knew nothing other than we were dating. Not that I was anyone particularly special or meaningful in his life. When I flew to Hawaii for work, he dropped me off at the airport and said a perfunctory goodbye. It was the longest we would be apart since we met. I was crushed. Little by little these small observances fueled my secret fears that he had doubts, and that made me very wary of handing over all of myself to him– and to the relationship-- completely.

My hypersensitivity to what I perceived as indifference was the source of a number of petty squabbles, and misunderstandings. My feelings were always on the surface of every discussion, and therefore recklessly and needlessly getting hurt.

My friends didn't think Indiana was such a good idea. Two weeks with his parents? They asked. What if you are miserable? What will you do? This is a recipe for disaster they cautioned.

But I didn't agree. This was an opportunity. This was a test. This was the only way I would ever know his family, and really get to know who he was when he was with them. This was a chance for me to see how I fit in. To see if they could be my family too. It was also a chance to spend an extended period together as a couple-something as of yet we'd never been able to do- and to probe what it might be like to do that on a full time basis, instead of the snatches of time we cobbled together between our work and friends, and his parental responsibilities. This was a chance to see if *we* could be a family, and be happy. I took it.

And it was wonderful. We got up late and made breakfast. We sat around and watched TV. We drank wine on the deck, and played slip and slide on the grass in the backyard. I taught the girls how to do cartwheels and we giggled while doing summersaults down a modest hill until we were dizzy. We went to the water park, and the shopping mall, and rode bikes around the neighborhood. It was good. It was all I had hoped and more.

In fact, it inspired me. When we came home, I couldn't imagine going back to the old way of life. I wanted us to be a family every day. I wanted us to move in together, and I told him so.

We had talked about moving in together before. He was actually the first one to bring it up. It was only a couple months into the relationship when he told me he thought about living together every time I went home. I was touched. At first we thought that maybe he could live with me, or I could live with him, but neither of our places was really suitable for two – much less four. And then I decided it was too soon. I wasn't yet divorced and I wanted that chapter in my life closed before I began a new one. I told him I wanted to wait until my lease was up in October, and then we could proceed, assuming of course that his divorce should be well under way by then too.

But now, in the afterglow of this new family life, everything felt different. Now I felt we had moved beyond the casual dating stage. I felt we had left behind the separate lives that met for drinks or dinner or coffee and kept toothbrushes and t-shirts at the other person's apartment. I didn't want to go back. I wanted to move forward. I wanted this man in my life every day- from grocery shopping to laundry – to sex on our very own kitchen floor.

But that was before reality sunk its claws back in.

A two week vacation is not real life. Devoid of the pressures of work and hostile spouses, and real mommies, life was good. We were good. But back at home the nagging voice inside me that kept picking at my happiness was asking me if I had all the details. If I knew what lay in store for me, and if I was truly on board.

It started with the phone calls. For some time the Doctor had all but stopped answering the phone when she called. He didn't want to talk to her. He had nothing to say. When they did speak, I could here him answering her in short direct sentences meant to convey the minimal amount of information in a manner devoid of personal affection. But she kept at it, constantly trying to engage him in a casual banter that he clearly resented. Pressing blithely for a friendly relationship that was completely at odds with her sense of entitlement for monetary remuneration for their marriage. At odds with her selfish desire to strip him of everything he had worked for in order to satisfy her own personal need for financial security and comfort. At odds with the fact that this behavior was impeding the formal dissolution of their marriage, and making him terribly unhappy. Why, I imagine she wondered to herself, should everyone not give her everything she desired, and be happy about it too?

In Indiana these phone calls became more frequent. Every morning and every evening, and sometimes in between. Sometimes she talked to the Doctor, sometimes she would call the house and talk to her in-laws, always under the guise of talking to the girls. Given the unpleasant circumstances she was creating for me, listening to any friendliness between the adults was like ants crawling all over my skin. I felt certain that she knew it, and that this was a deliberate intimidation tactic. A pissing on the proverbial territory so to speak. These are my children, and my in-laws, and (still) my husband she seemed to shout at me through the phone. I was here first she reminded me, lest I forget my place, and think she was out of the picture. But I swallowed my bitterness, and told myself to pick my battles. This was a temporary an immature outburst borne of insecurity

But he kept calling even after we came back. She wanted to talk about the divorce the Doctor told me. Her boyfriend was leaving her, and she felt insecure, and as a result he thought she was softening and becoming more agreeable to the terms of their separation. I was highly suspicious.

And so when he called me one morning on his way home from work, exhausted and complaining bitterly about the previous nights unbearable overnight shift at the hospital, he made the mistake of bringing her up.

"And in the middle of it all, she called and wanted to talk about thing," He said.
My ears caught on fire. What things? I demanded to know. Had she agreed to anything? Was she working? Was she making any contribution? Why couldn't the lawyers come up with a settlement? Why wouldn't they talk to each other? They were taking the house off the market? Was the divorce contingent on the sale of the house? Would they still be married three years from now?

Until now I had been careful to back off at a certain point – I didn't push too hard when it came to the terms of the divorce because I knew it upset him. He wanted to be a good father and spare his children the ugliness of a court battle. As the child of parents who ended their marriage in a particularly nasty court battle, I could appreciate that. But this time I was unrelenting. I needed answers to these questions. We were about to move in together and I could not keep looking the other way. What if six months from now, or a year from now I found myself living with him, and no progress had been made? Living with a married man, who had no real prospect of divorce because she refused to agree to anything less than impoverishing us for the rest of our natural lives? Making it impossible for us to support children of our own?

And then I asked myself some hard questions. What was I really willing to give up? What did I want?

I want marriage and children. I want a family. If I am to take on a parental role to his children, I want a say in how they are raised and I want my opinion to be respected. I want him to consider what that private catholic school costs us in terms of building a future for ourselves, and re-think the excellent public schools that are free, and just as good, if less elitist. I don't want to be an accessory to his marriage to her. I refuse to do it. I want to be first in line at least some of the time.

As I mulled this all over, I realized that so far, I have just fit in to his plans. Nothing has had to change for me. Nobody made any sacrifices to accommodate me, and I made no demands. I was willing to stay in the same city because he couldn't leave his kids. In fact I even acquiesced to living in the same part of town, because even though the other side of town has great houses for rent and wonderful public schools, they simply couldn't be asked to drive an hour to school when they were with him—and God forbid they change schools. My suggestions that he try taking them on weekends only fell on deaf ears. The idea that we might live in another city and he have them for vacations or fly them out for weekend visits unheard of (and possibly prohibitively expensive). The idea that he might fight for custody was immediately dismissed.

Nothing and no one had any flexibility but me. I was the only one willing to bend. And I was willing to do that – without complaint –as long as I got the one thing I wanted in return: a free man who planned to have more children with me.

Without that I don't know if I can live with them getting everything and me getting the scraps. His responsibilities toward her and the kids come first. It's not his fault. But I need to be a very close second, and in many cases an equal consideration. I don't know if I can accept it. any other way. I don't know if I can live me life deferring to the first wife and family without the bitterness and resentment eating me up. I am pretty certain I can't.

And so I made up my mind. I can't move in with him until there is some resolution about the divorce. I can't move forward until they have made peace and are willing to let me be a positive part of the relationship, or until he is willing to put his foot down and cut her out. Until he is willing to say, I love this woman and she is part of my future. She deserves something too, and I am willing to fight for it.

But even though I have come to this resolution it is breaking my heart. Because I don't want to give ultimatums. I don't want to lose him. But I have settled for less than I deserve for too many years and I can't do that again. This is my last chance. There is no time to spend years negotiating or hoping things will change. They won't. I have to ask for what I want. So I am asking. But I am scared to death, and my heart is tight in my chest . My stomach aches and a wave of depressive tiredness hangs over me like a cloud. I am sadder than it has ever been. But I am hoping for the best.

The things I can't say

You are probably thinking I am avoiding you. I am. You called twice today. The first time I had gotten up from my pool chair to go to the bathroom and left the phone behind. The second time I was actually in the pool trying to drown my frustrations in two miles of repetitive motion. Both times I checked my phone after I got back. You didn't leave a message, so I decided to let you sweat a little.

I know you know I am upset. You're like that – really good at knowing and anticipating my emotional reaction. And I imagine you feel badly. But I don't know what to say to you. I don't know if I should swallow the lump that is rising in my heart and in my throat and threatening to destroy us. I don't know how to get past what seems more and more to be a permanent roadblock.

A "deal breaker", that's what they call it. Something you just can't live with – something you just can't get past. And I think I may have found one.

Just a week ago we were basking in the glow of the promise of new home – a place we would live together and make a life of our own. But they gave the house with the porch and the basketball hoop to the other couple –the one with the golden retriever locked in the back of their blue Eddie Bauer Subaru Outback. You said it was no big deal. Fair's fair. They could take the place sooner. They offered a longer lease. No big deal.

But it was a big deal. It was a sign that this road couldn't be so easy. That life was just not going to let us ride off into the sunset without a fight. But I am so tired of fighting. The thought of the struggle ahead made me cry. It made me cry all night until you came over and held me and made me feel better. Made me feel foolish and petty for resenting the happy couple and their dog. For resenting the twenty-something landlord and his glowing pregnant wife, who had the power to choose between us and them. Between easy and hard.

But now I think I am beginning to see it was all for the best. We can't have the house with the porch and the basketball hoop. We can't make a home and a family. We can't do anything because we are stuck. Stuck like waders in hip-deep mud. Stuck because of her. Maybe the would-be landlord and the swollen belly by his side could sense it.

Yesterday I thought I could come over and make you feel better. I thought I could cheer you up and we'd make love and everything would be alright. But you told me I couldn't make it better and I went to bed alone and frustrated. I dreamed all night about you. I dreamed that I was trying to give you something and you wouldn't take it. Or you would accept it and then accidentally leave it behind. And all throughout the dream I kept chasing after you trying to give you the thing you'd forgotten. As the dream wore on I became more and more upset by your carelessness and I began to think you didn't want it, but every time I would ask you if you wanted it you would say yes – enthusiastically. But I didn't believe you.

It doesn't take a genius to psychoanalyze that. I give and you say it's just what you want. But you leave me behind, over and over again. And when I ask you are you sure, you say definitely, without a doubt – but your choices tell me a different story.

Like the way you always diminish our relationship to your friends and family. You once became annoyed when a told you a friend of mine joked about the intelligence and height of our future children. "That's awfully presumptuous of her," you snapped. "I don't know what you tell your friends but I don't go around saying we are getting married and having children." I was speechless at the time-and heartbroken really. I had said nothing of the sort in fact – just that you made me happy and that I could see myself with you for a very long time. Your words wounded me deeply and caught me so off-guard I couldn't respond. The sting stayed with me for weeks to come.

You waylaid my fears, only to re-ignite them on a regular basis. When your parents asked you "what's the deal?" You said you didn't know. When your daughter asked if I was your girlfriend, you seemed to think she didn't need to know. And when one of your closest friends recently inquired about us, you say "we're thinking about moving in together." Thinking about it? We were ready to sign the lease on a house last week. I thought we were done thinking about it. Why can't you say to them what you say to me?

But I can let all those little slips go – chalk it up to nervousness about what your friends and family might think. Worries that they might say it's too soon, or it's too fast, or how well do you really know her? I have them to. But I tell them the truth. That I love you, and that you are the piece of my life that was missing. I have no need to wait.

Except that I do – need to wait that is. Because you can't seem to get her out of your life. She calls and calls and calls. You talk about money and selling the house and children's school tuition, and months go by and you're still no further than you were before. There is no resolution in sight. No end to this marriage and your financial and personal obligations that are greater than your means. No end to the uncertain future for us.

And therein lies the deal breaker. It is one of life's cruelest jokes that I should find a man I could love so deeply, trust so completely, whose heart resonates with my own, but is nevertheless bound to another woman and the family he made with her; dangled like a carrot in front of my face, just out of reach of my grasp.

I need to move forward. I need the promise of a man who is mine, who will give me children and a family that is ours. I cannot wait much longer. And so here I am. wondering if I should do what my heart tells me I should, even though it's bound to break it. I am wondering if I have the strength to say what I don't want to – that I cannot move in with you. That perhaps, even, I can no longer be with you. Not right now. Not until there is an end in sight.

This morning when I woke up I reached for you and held you while you were sleeping. I secretly wished you would wake up and kiss me. I wished that despite your exhaustion and lack of sleep that you would be overcome by desire. But instead you told me to get in the shower. She would be coming to bring the kids. And something inside me snapped. I couldn't take it. Not today. I couldn't see her. I couldn't see them. I couldn't dig deeper and give more, and play the step-mother. I couldn't face the woman and her children who robbed have me of yours and mine. Who will always come first and will leave nothing left over for us.

So I went to the pool, to beat my anger and sadness into the water and I couldn't answer the phone because I have nothing to say. Nothing I can say that won't break my heart further.